


Nightshade and Roses

by iopeneditbeforechristmas



Series: rosemary month 2016 [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Rosemary Month, day two: garden, ridiculously sappy sapphics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 17:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7649293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iopeneditbeforechristmas/pseuds/iopeneditbeforechristmas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're my favourite rose."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightshade and Roses

One morning, Rose woke up with the bed beside her cold. The first thing she felt was panic, nightmares of Kanaya grey and lifeless and splattered in jade blood rushing back to drown her. The second thing she felt was embarrassment, because really? Rose Lalonde, panicking over her girlfriend getting up early one morning? It was just a little bit ridiculous.

But so was the idea that Rose Lalonde had a girlfriend, at times.

Rose got up, yawning, and wrapped her dressing gown around her with a rustle of lavender silk. Roxy had conjured it up for her one day, for zero reason, just because she thought Rose might like it. Rose got all emotional and hugged her. It was slightly embarrassing because this was her teen mother she was hugging and she was maybe crying a little bit, but it was also one the loveliest things Rose had ever experienced, so she let herself enjoy it. And then wore the dressing gown every evening so she could feel like some high society socialite from the early twentieth century every evening. Kanaya found it highly attractive.

Speaking of Kanaya, Rose found her outside their house. They'd decided to build it on a hill overlooking Can Town, next door to a tiny copse of trees, and therefore got the luxury of the sunrise every morning.

Kanaya was kneeling in a patch of dirt, palm flat to the ground, face creased in concentration. From the soil around Kanaya’s palm, Rose could see the top of a tiny shoot begin to poke its head out.

“What are you doing?” she asked softly, unwilling to rouse Kanaya from her work. Her head bent, hair slightly ruffled and a thin layer of sweat coating the green that had risen in her cheeks, she looked amazing.

Kanaya smiled, but didn’t look up from her work as she said, “I am making a garden. It’s one of the more romantic aspects of human culture I’ve discovered.”

“Trolls don’t have gardens?”

“Well, we are by and large a nocturnal species, so we don’t have quite so many opportunities to tend anything, and I generally find most of the plants that grow by night ugly.”

At this, Rose’s interest was piqued. “You have plants that grow by night?”

“Yep, nocturnias, shadowberries, nightshade-”

“Nightshade’s a poison on Earth.”

“Really? On Alternia it’s one of the more beautiful night flowers; it’s blue and glows, sort of. Most of the bluebloods take it as one of their more eclectic caste symbols. Highbloods tend to do that.”

“Interesting. Slightly eerie, though.”

“Yes, but you can use them as sort of torches in the night, if you like. During the day they just shrivel up.”

Rose sighed, staring at the girl she’d already decided she wanted to spend her life with, and wondering if it was very odd that she was an alien. Not, of course, that Rose meant to imply anything odd about aliens. Except that she did, really. Aliens were weird. Kanaya was an alien. Kanaya was, not to put too fine a point on it, kind of weird. Rose wondered what her mother would think about it, if her mother hadn’t bled out on a chessboard years ago.

Really, she didn’t need to worry. As Rose very well knew, her mother shipped her and Kanaya harder than anyone, which included Karkat and the cat troll who made shipping walls.

“Tell me more about Alternia,” she said on impulse.

Kanaya looked at her and laughed. “I’ve already told you almost all there is,” she said. “The caste system, highbloods, auxiliatrices, culling, the way the empire works-”

“Not that,” Rose explained, waving a hand about vaguely. “The plants, the flowers, everything. It’s been three years and I still don’t know your favourite Alternian plant. I think that constitutes a lapse in girlfriend confidence.”

Kanaya blushed. “It’s stupid, actually. My favourite flower was always a rose.”

“You have roses?” asked Rose. She sat up straighter, staring at Kanaya in the way she always did when someone had interesting information, regardless of the veracity; a piercing glare, it looked as cool and collected as Rose always did on the outside, but underneath shone a singular sort of hunger.

“Mmm, lots. They bloom in the middle of the sweep, usually.”

“What about colour?”

“Hmm?”

“What was your favourite colour rose?”

At this, Kanaya blushed again, the green in her cheeks deepening from exertion to embarrassment. “It was always lilac.”

Rose ignored the adorably sappy sentiment behind that to ask, “You have lilac roses?”

“We have pretty much every colour rose. Don’t you?”

“Well, I guess if you dye them then yeah, but otherwise we just have white and red and sometimes yellow, I think. How do we not know what colour roses there are on each other’s planets?”

When Kanaya shrugged, she did so with the sort of delicacy Rose had spent about six months trying to master before deciding it wasn’t worth it. She shrugged now, saying, “I have no idea. I’ll show you the kind of rose I like though.”

Kanaya pressed her hand to the soil, palm flat and facing downwards. Face creased in concentration, she paused for a few minutes, breathing deeply. Rose watched as a single flower grew slowly out of the ground, petals furling and unfurling every minute or so.

“How can you do that?” she wondered.

“Well,” Kanaya said, “I’m a Sylph of Space; sylphs heal, and space is the aspect of creation. I’m sort of working around it here, but...I’m using creation to heal. We’ve all remarked on this, but this new world isn’t exactly...complete. It’s like an entry level world on a game. It’s not whole. So I’m healing it by making flowers, I guess.”

Rose didn’t say anything for a while. Just as Kanaya began to tilt her head in polite confusion, she leant forward and kissed her. Kanaya relaxed, her breath soft and warm against Rose’s cheeks. They stayed like that for minutes, until Kanaya reached out a hand and drew rose upon lavender rose from the earth. Turning to Rose, she whispered something so ridiculously cheesy the two girls had to laugh.

“You’re my favourite rose.”


End file.
